The Low Passions: Poems

Explosive and incantatory, The Low Passions traces the fringes of the American experiment through the eyes of a young drifter. ?Carlson-Wee has a true gift for narrative. The poems carve arcs toward illumination.? ?Todd Davis, Rain Taxi Review of Books ?These poems rattle along with energy and awe like the trains that fill these pages.? ?Dorianne Laux

Literature & Fiction

Carlson-Wee, Anders

Poetry

W.W.Norton&Company

In a knockout debut collection haunted by shame, violence, and the darkest of our human origins, Anders Carlson-Wee mines nourishment and holiness from our depths.
Explosive and incantatory, The Low Passions traces the fringes of the American experiment through the eyes of a young drifter. Pathologically frugal, reckless, and vulnerable, the narrator of these viscerally compelling poems hops freight trains, hitchhikes, dumpster dives, and sleeps in the homes of total strangers, scavenging forgotten and hardscrabble places for tangible forms of faith. A range of strong-willed characters takes shape, amplified by a chorus of monologues from the strangers who shelter him and the family he’s left behind―each made manifest by the poet’s devoted ear and sensitive eye.

Disease of Kings: Poems

In poems bursting with narrative power, Disease of Kings explores the tender yet volatile friendship between two young scammers living off the fat of society. Here are stories of an odd couple who scrounges, cons, hustles, and steals, nursing a sense of freedom that is fraught with codependence and isolation. With plainspoken language and tremendous tonal range, Anders Carlson-Wee leads us into the heart of their uneasy domesticity--a purgatory where, in this poet's vision, it is possible for loss to give way to hope, lack to fulfillment, shame to gratitude. From "The Juggler" As if we could sing what we can't say. Catch what we can never hold. Now the ring of the crowd tightens for the show.

In poems bursting with narrative power, Disease of Kings explores the tender yet volatile friendship between two young scammers living off the fat of society. Here are stories of an odd couple who scrounge, con, hustle, and steal, alternately proud of their ability to fabricate a life at the margins and ashamed of their own laziness and greed. Rich with a specificity of voices, these poems locate themselves in a midwestern city at once gritty with reality and achingly anonymous. Here, the central speaker and his best--only--friend, North, come together and apart, nursing a sense of freedom that is fraught with codependence and isolation. With plainspoken language and tremendous tonal range, Anders Carlson-Wee leads us into the heart of one friendship's uneasy domesticity--a purgatory where, in this poet's vision, it is possible for loss to give way to hope, lack to fulfillment, shame to gratitude.

Poetry. Winner of the 2015 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. The poems of Anders Carlson-Wee's debut chapbook DYNAMITE flare with the volatile heat of discovery and loss as they follow the journeys of a speaker whose wanderlust leads him to the fringes of the American experiment. Whether hopping freight trains with his brother or sleeping in the homes of strangers, the speaker is haunted by the tragic and oddly gracious people he meets. Selected by Jennifer Grotz as the winner of The Frost Place Chapbook Competition, Anders Carlson-Wee's DYNAMITE rides into the unmappable territories and wide expanses of the spirit.

Dynamite (Frost Place Chapbook Competition Winner)

Bull City Press

Floodgate Poetry Series Vol. 3 collects three chapbooks in a single volume: brothers Anders and Kai Carlson-Wee’s Northern Corn invites us on a trip across an America of dust, trains, poverty, dignity, and dreams; Begotten, co-written by Cave Canem fellows F. Douglas Brown and Geffrey Davis, bravely and tenderly explores fatherhood in the era of Black Lives Matter; and Enid Shomer’s Driving through the Animal lovingly moves between unflinching witness of destruction and hope for the future. It’s the third volume in the Floodgate Poetry Series, edited by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum. Chapbooks—short books under 40 pages—arose when printed books became affordable in the 16th century. The series is in the tradition of 18th and 19th century British and American literary annuals, and the Penguin Modern Poets Series of the 1960s and ’70s.

Floodgate Poetry Series Vol. 3: Three Chapbooks in a Single Volume

Shomer, Enid

Davis, Geffrey

Carlson-Wee, Kai

Brown, F. Douglas

Upper Rubber Boot Books

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Books by Carlson-Wee, Anders

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Carlson-Wee, Anders. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Low Passions: Poems

The Low Passions: Poems

Disease of Kings: Poems

Disease of Kings: Poems

Dynamite (Frost Place Chapbook Competition Winner)

Floodgate Poetry Series Vol. 3: Three Chapbooks in a Single Volume